Romax Improves Driveline Design and Development

May 15, 2013

Model of the ButterflyTM Medium Speed Drivetrain in RomaxDesigner.

Romax Technology is enabling a rapid, seamless and lossless workflow for driveline design and development from planning to manufacture. The innovative approach, backed by a series of key new product releases, empowers Romax customers to accelerate time to market, reduce costs and the number of reworks required while improving quality and innovation.

“While progress has been made in driveline design and development over the last few years, competitive pressures keep moving the bar, resulting in a process that is still characterized by slower than needed development cycles, higher development costs and a reduced capacity for innovation. There is limited scope for creativity or innovation and there is often unnecessary and significant rework across many stages of design, modeling and analysis,” says Dr. Jamie Pears, product manager, Romax Technology.

“Although the major organisations involved in driveline design have mostly achieved this shift from analogue to digital tools and from physical prototypes to virtual prototypes - the pressure is on to tackle the operational challenges they face and make the next shift forward,” he adds. “We believe this is to develop next generation streamlined, cross-organisational processes which increase innovation and eliminate unnecessary re-work; break down intra and extra organisation walls to accommodate seamless, multi-directional collaboration and teaming and to enable these processes and organisations with next generation technology.”

For Romax, the new approach is supported by the launch of three new products. The latest version of Concept is an innovative concept design software package, targeted primarily at automotive, off-road, heavy equipment and aerospace. Concept enables users to rapidly plan, develop and test concept driveline design options and then pass to RomaxDesigner for detailed design and analysis.

CAD Fusion is a robust data interoperability plug-in for moving model data quickly and easily between the company’s flagship RomaxDesigner and Concept products and third party CAD and gear design applications and tools. Dynamic Fusion is a new way to significantly improve the speed and accuracy of component, gearbox and driveline Multibody Dynamic (MBD) Analysis.

“Supported by the strength of these releases, we are enabling our customers to build critical connections between designers and computer aided engineering (CAE) modelers and analysts who often work in different departments than other designers, analysts and modelers,” says Pears.

“Together these solutions support the process from planning to manufacture and maximize a “lossless” development process where moving from one system to another doesn’t require a model rebuild,” adds Pears. “The solutions represent the core solution set that will increase the effectiveness of designers and analysts and are also intelligently open to passing sophisticated model and engineering data between other tools in the driveline design and development ecosystem.

“Ultimately, we’re enabling a rapid and integrated approach that will make a significant difference to the everyday working process of designers and analysts across our core industries.”

A more in-depth look at this technology will be featured in the June/July issue of Gear Technology.